Hiring an employee checklist: how to recruit employees

Every company gets to a point when they realize they need to hire more people. Either the company is growing, someone left, or a new department has just been opened.

Finding the right people is challenging, because it can make or break your company. Besides worrying about legal stuff and documentation, what else should you look for when hiring for a position in your company? To quote Steve Jobs, “It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

Hiring an employee checklist

What should you keep in mind when hiring a new person? Here are some key points:

Define the role you are hiring for. Is it an existing role in the company? A vacant position because someone left/got promoted? If that is the case, you have a clear picture of what you are looking for. But if you are hiring for a new position that hasn’t existed in the company before, it’s important to consider two things: does this job description fit with something that already exists in the job market? Meaning, are there trained and experienced people who can do this job? If there are, then you just need to find them and hire them. But what if you are hiring for is a start-up or a tech company, for example, you need people willing to do a job without a clear description. People willing to develop and execute outside-the-box ideas. It’s harder to hire professionals to execute ideas and processes that don’t exist yet. In that last scenario, it’s important to find and hire employees willing to work in a non-structured environment and learn and grow with the company.

Find your candidates. There are different ways to go about this. One of them is asking for referrals from your best employees. They might know someone who is a good fit for the role and might save you from going through a pile of CVs. However, because people tend to associate mostly with people who are similar to them, that could make for a less diverse workplace. And being diverse is not just about being politically correct. Research shows that that a more diverse workforce can be better for your business. In fact, radically diverse teams outperform non-diverse teams by 35%. To find these candidates, post your job description on different channels and sites, and be willing to look for candidates that might not initially be your go to options.

Test them. After you’ve done your first selection of candidates, you can apply some tests to learn more about them. Having your job description in mind, and an initial idea of what a good candidate would be, you can test your candidates in different ways to see if they are a good fit for the role you are hiring for. Such tests can be personality tests, levelling tests and exams for technical skills. It all depends on the type of role you are trying to fill (see the first bullet point).

Interview them. This step can be completed before or after testing the candidates. If you are dealing with a big number of candidates, applying tests first could be a good way to filter out the best candidates to interview later on. In a face to face interview, you can get a better idea of the type of person you are dealing with, if they would be a good fit for the company culture and get a general idea of the person’s personality and demeanor.

Train them. Got the results from your tests and interviews? Now it’s time to help the new employees get started in their new positions. There are many ways to do this. Depending on the size of your company and team, it can be done face to face during a few sessions. As you grow as a business, however, there comes the need to scale your training and streamline it. That can be done by using modern tools, such as online training courses. These can be taken during work hours or before/after them.

Hiring employees and our tool

As discussed above, there are different methods and tools to help you grow as a company and make good decisions when hiring.

Easy LMS has different test builder tools such as online assessments that can be used for personality tests, exams with a pass or fail rate that can help you assess technical skills and knowledge from your candidates, as well as training courses that can be used during the onboarding process. It’s also possible to add exams at the end of each course and issue a certificate for the user.

Would you like to know more?

If you would like to know more about how to make your hiring and training processes even better, don’t hesitate to request a free live demo with one of our consultants. We will do our best to understand your use case and see if we are a good fit for you. You can also do a 7-day free trial of any paid subscription plan.